


Done Worse

by Gem_Gem



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Gen or Pre-Slash, Pining John, Sharing a Bed, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Short, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23840635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gem_Gem/pseuds/Gem_Gem
Summary: John has a nightmare and decides to get into bed with Sherlock.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 26
Kudos: 65
Collections: Sherlock Fandom VS 2020





	Done Worse

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Делать вещи и похуже](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24948763) by [Little_Unicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Unicorn/pseuds/Little_Unicorn)



> So... I wrote this back on the 6th February 2018 and in 2018 my hard drive broke and I went into a spiral of upset, devoid of inspiration and motivation. Thankfully, and obviously, this story was not on there, but because of losing the others, and becoming so emotionally broken by that, I was unable to finish it.
> 
> Any solo story of mine has been left, because I now struggle so much with getting back into them. My inspiration and motivation for my own stories is barely there at all. Instead I write with others, so they can prop me up when I flail and wilt.
> 
> This story, in fact, is still not finished to how I had originally planned, but it is all I can do. Perhaps posting it and hearing what you think, will stir something within me to either edit this or continue this. For now, it is a small short. No smut. Just fluff. Just the two men being adorable together.
> 
> I hope this cheers you up and makes you forget, if only briefly, about what's going on around you. 💜
> 
> I want to thank both [KittieHill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittieHill) and [FinAmour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinAmour) who I showed bits of this to when I was writing it way back then. I still remember how enthusiastic you were for me.

The blinding cold light of the bathroom was a heavenly reprieve from the hot, damp, dark recesses of his bedroom and clinging, twisted sheets. John freely swayed in the middle of the room, wallowing in it. He didn’t know why the nightmare had started, though he didn’t often know, not really. Sometimes they’d happen without rhyme or reason, while other times there was a pattern, there was an explanation. Thankfully they weren’t as bad as they once had been, when he’d been alone, in pain, and poor, sitting in his cramped bedsit with his cane against his bedpost and his gun in his drawer. There had been times he’d almost reached for it upon awaking, overwhelmed and too sick and tired of the agony. The mental and physical agony of it all.

He sighed and shuffled to the sink, turning on the cold tap to wash the perspiration from his face, his temples, his neck, and pulled off his heavily sweat-soaked vest to get under his armpits. The heat was the worst of it. Every time, John thought he could feel the scorchingly sharp sand under his back, the sizzling of his wounded flesh, the harsh sun beating down on his face, boiling his eyes in their sockets. He hated it. Hated the stickiness he felt afterwards. The smell of musk and the gritty, grimy sensation of salt over his body. Waking up in his own sodden sheets tangled about his legs like a constricting snake. He hated it all.

Promptly ignoring his haggard and exhausted reflection, John rubbed a cold, wet hand across his nape, and glanced at the adjoining glass door, an idea forming, a yearning dawning. It wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to follow it and cross the threshold. Many times John had found himself staring at the door in the middle of the night after a particularly horrid nightmare, wishing he had the courage to go through it, and all of those times he had denied himself, returning instead to his own sweltering bedroom with its messy sheets, for another nightmare to claim him.

Turning the tap off, John stepped away from the sink, skin still wet, and went over to the door. He couldn’t see through it, not with the bathroom light turning the warped glass into a bumpy fun house mirror, but he didn’t really need to see. He knew what was beyond. Sometimes it was just the room itself, its owner out in the living room focused on his laptop, on equipment, an experiment, on a map mottled with pins, but other times it was more than an empty, cool room, it was an occupied haven. John had felt the need to enter with or without Sherlock present, but he couldn’t deny, at least not to himself in the privacy of his own mind, that having Sherlock there made the desire to enter stronger.

Taking a breath, John slowly, silently, opened the door to peek in. He didn’t want to linger on it any longer. He didn’t want to try and wonder over the complicated reasons for wanting to enter, he just wanted to, and this time he was going to. No backing out. Sherlock often invaded John’s personal space, his personal life, in all manners and forms, and now it was John’s turn. He could do this. He was allowed this. It was both more and yet less than whenever and whatever Sherlock had bullied, pushed, or cast over John. The only difference was that it fit Sherlock to do what others wouldn’t, to do what the norm forbids, to break the rules, but not John. Not unless morals outweighed the risk, of course.

John peered at the mass of dark curls on the pillow, following the curled lump of Sherlock’s body under the covers, and let the light illuminate a slice of the man’s sleeping face before he took a marching step forward with shaking purpose. There was no turning back now. This was as far as he’d ever got. Normally he’d make it to the door, or he’d at least take a peek through the crack, but now, now his bare feet stood on the carpet of Sherlock’s bedroom and the scent of sleep, of warmth, of Sherlock, was both gratifying and clogging in equal measure.

After some long, silent staring, making sure Sherlock was indeed asleep, John fumbled to turn off the bathroom light and closed the door behind him, panting quietly against its frigid surface. He was in. He had taken a leap, given in to his own eagerness and constant self-deprecating pleading, and he was in the room with the man he spent his life with, the person he gravitated toward. He listened to Sherlock, to the deep, steady breaths he was taking, and turned to make his way over in the blanketed gloom, knocking his shins into the edge after two and a half steps.

The sound and movement did nothing to stir the slumbering man, as John knew it wouldn’t, not when he was this heavily sleeping, and John took a few moments to feel out the cool covers with unsteady hands, peeling back the dry, soft duvet. Gently being exposed to the room didn’t rouse Sherlock either, but John paused anyway once it was done, waiting and staring as his eyes adjusted to the darkness once more.

Sherlock was in a foetal position, hands tucked up to his chest and knees bent, and though John had seen him sleeping before, both stretched still and coiled up tight, the blurry visage of Sherlock being displayed by John’s hand, displayed to his gawping gaze, made the positioning all the more innocent and vulnerable than it initially had been. John sat into the space next to the slumbering man, teetering on the edge of the mattress, then held in a deep inhale as he quickly rolled towards Sherlock and slipped under the covers, blanketing them both with a rippled layer of expensive fabric.

Now, finally where he’d been wanting, been seeking, all this time, John let out an inaudible sigh and relaxed, looking at Sherlock’s slackened expression and roaming eyes beneath delicate eyelids. One side of Sherlock’s face was still bruised from their tussle with a very violent female psychopath several days prior and John frowned at how dark it looked in the dim room compared to the rest of the skin. Was this the reason for his nightmare? He’d seen Sherlock get hurt before. Had seen him seconds away from death more times than he cared to count. The man was always leaping into danger, drawn to it like a moth to the flame, and John followed right along with him, happy to be scorched.

Reaching out, John touched the soft smooth flesh of his wrist, following the delicate geography of his bones, the prominent veins, and the faint brush of hair along his forearm. There were a few abrasions and healing scars, most invisible to the eye, hidden by sleeves and animated gesticulation, and John felt almost privileged to know of them, to have treated them, to be touching them. He was the closest he had ever been to Sherlock, closer than he assumed anyone had been, at least for a long time, and he clenched his teeth at the automatic eruption of heat, trying not to feel awkward and ashamed about that, about stealing that intimacy. Drifting his fingertips back down to where the steady pulse of the man he would kill for thumped, he counted, breathed. Pushing away the continuous self-deprecation and questioning consciousness.

He startled, flinching in retreat, when Sherlock moved, but was prevented a rather undignified escape to the floor when a large hand caged his own and rearranged it, taking it from its place at Sherlock’s wrist to Sherlock’s hot and pale throat, “‘Wisdom comes through suffering,’” were the words rumbled up against John’s burning face. Two knowing, arrogant, piercing, understanding eyes opened and their gazes caught, halting any and all excuses that John was half-way into creating. “Took you long enough.”

John tried to glare in response, humiliated that he’d been so easily read, that he’d stupidly presumed Sherlock hadn’t noticed his strange, unhealthy want to be close, closer, closest, “Shut up,” he grumbled through his teeth. “You can’t have—”

“You weren’t exactly subtle,” Sherlock interrupted and stroked a blazing route up John’s arm to nestle long fingers over his neck, mimicking the resting place of John’s hand.

“Hm, no, I was pretty subtle,” John argued in disagreement.

“You _really_ weren’t.”

John pursed his mouth and let out a long breath, blowing aside Sherlock’s fringe, “You barely paid me any attention whenever I briefly thought about this.”

“ _Wrong_.”

“Sherlock, for goodness sake, you frequently talk to an empty bloody room because you don’t know I’ve gone out!” John retorted. “How do you know that the John you _apparently_ pay attention to isn’t just the imaginary one you think up?--”

Sherlock scoffed and his eyelids fluttered, obscuring his rolling eyes, “I don’t have the capacity to imagine you. You’d be a pale imitation of who John Watson _really_ is. Out of everyone, you are the only one I _can’t_ imagine.”

“… Is that some odd compliment?”

“I don’t see what’s odd about it?”

John shifted and frowned, “Surely you’ve imagined how certain things may go between us?”

“Are you asking if I’ve _fantasied_ about you, John?” Sherlock drawled with an arching eyebrow and a twisting corner of his quick, clever, smug mouth.

“Everyone imagines situations!” John countered, not dignifying that question with an answer. “Are you saying you have your own rendition of Molly, Greg, and sodding Mycroft in that head of yours, but not of me?”

Sherlock rolled one of his shoulders, displacing the covers, “I don’t see how that’s so difficult to believe,” he murmured lowly. “I see you every morning. Every night. You are but a text away from me at all times. You are a constant, unwavering part of my life. Like the sun.”

“Is… is this how you are when you’re in bed with someone?” John asked with a snorting, awkward, short laugh.

“Possibly,” Sherlock replied and flashed a small, soft, crooked smile. “Though there is very little research to back that up.”

“How little?”

Sherlock shot him an unimpressed look at the prying question and tilted his head enough for his mouth to graze John’s wrist, “Jealousy does not become you,” he drawled, smirking when it got his cheek swatted.

“I liked it better when you were asleep.”

“So did I,” Sherlock returned and with a suddenly stroking, nimble, gentle thumb, that skimmed the edge of John’s jaw, he took John’s wrist in a loose grasp and bodily turned over, pulling John’s hand so it settled once again on his throat. “Next time don’t hesitate too long and wake me up.”

John scowled at the back of his head, at his thick, messy, dark curls, finding it amusing that two of them had extended up to create what looked like two horns, and accepted the obvious offer to spoon after a minute or two of contemplation, “I could just throttle you sometimes, you know...”

“Careful,” Sherlock said with a vibrating thrum of a laugh, “I tend to like that--”

“Oh my _God_! - Since when was _this_ your type of humour?”

“I like to surprise you.”

Sinking into the mattress and against Sherlock’s long back, John let out a deep sigh, nose swiftly tickled by mischievous dark hair, “That explains a lot,” he muttered, letting the warmth, the pillow under his head, the draping sheets over him, drag him toward what certainly felt like a deeper and more comfortable sleep than the one before. Their positioning was a tad ungainly with his hand splayed over Sherlock’s throat, but was eased when he pressed closer, when he looped his arm under Sherlock’s.

“...You like when I surprise you.”

“Sometimes. Yes.”

“ _All_ the time.”

John clumsily covered Sherlock’s mouth and then gave his nose a rather childish, though thoroughly entertaining and well deserved, squeeze, “That ego of yours needs deflating.”

“You _like_ my big ego--”

“What’s got into you?” John snorted, thumping him on the shoulder when it started to shake with his inaudible laughter. “Less of that. I want to sleep. That’s… that’s the whole reason I’m here.”

Sherlock made a humming noise of blatantly unconvinced mirth, “Very well. Good night, John.”

“Good night, Sherlock.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback fuels me! 
> 
> [Gem's Tumblr](http://gem-gem-bites.tumblr.com/)


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